The Effects Of Housing And Childcare On Academic Persistence: Perceptions Of Scholar House Residents

Jessica Hawkins, Western Kentucky University

Abstract

Scholar House is a program that provides college students who are parents with supports such as affordable housing and childcare so that they are able to stay enrolled full time in school in hopes that they might graduate. This research investigates the perceptions the program participants have about the supports and how they affect their ability to persist academically. Residents were given the Scholar House Supports Survey, a 22-item instrument, that measured their perceptions of how being a part of the Scholar House program affected their grade point average, time, and finances. Mean scores were taken revealing that Scholar House residents, on average, did not agree that the supports played a large role in helping them to remain in college. This research is to serve as a starting point in order to determine the need for more programs of this nature or to modify existing programs in order to make them more effective